The Biological, Environmental and
Climate Sciences Department is the steward for Brookhaven National Laboratory's capabilities in
biology and biotechnology, environmental science, climate science,
radiobiology, structural biology, and bio-imaging, including radiotracer
development and their applications in plant biology and neuroscience.

Biological Sciences

Work in this area focuses on quantitative predictive models of
complex biological systems and their underlying networks. Research is
concentrated on understanding how they achieve robustness against noise
and perturbations, and how they change in the course of evolution.

The Plant Sciences group's goal is to understand the principles
underlying carbon capture, conversion, and storage in living systems;
and develop the capability to model, predict and optimize these
processes in plants and microorganisms.

This group studies structures and biological functions of proteins.
We develop facilities for x-ray crystallography at the NSLS and NSLS-II
for use by the scientific community, and continue to improve the T7
expression system developed here for producing proteins from cloned
genes. Research explores the types of protein structures found in
nature, elucidates large protein complexes by single-molecule Cryo-EM,
and analyzes protein folding, interactions and enzyme function in a
variety of biological systems.

Provides experimental, logistical and technical support at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory and
the Tandem Van de Graaff. These facilities are some of the few in the
world that can simulate the harsh cosmic and solar radiation environment
found in space, as well as exploring promising new avenues for cancer
and disease treatments.

Develops methodologies to help achieve our nation’s goal of increased
use of renewable energy. The program is structured into four R&D areas
including radiotracer chemistry, imaging instrumentation, radiotracer
methodology and biological applications with a major focus on the whole
plant and bioenergy grasses.

Environmental & Climate Sciences

Focused on improving process-level understanding of aerosol formation
and evolution mechanisms, aerosol absorption, and the direct and
indirect influences that aerosols have on clouds, precipitation and
climate.

Provides measurement capabilities to the DOE Atmospheric Radiation
Measurement (ARM) program for long-term measurements of aerosols and
their precursors across a global network of ground- and aircraft-based
locations.

One of ten national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical,
biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies and national security.
Brookhaven Lab also builds and operates major scientific facilities available to university, industry
and government researchers. Brookhaven is operated and managed for DOE's Office of Science by Brookhaven
Science Associates, a limited-liability company founded by the Research Foundation for the State
University of New York on behalf of Stony Brook University, the largest academic user of Laboratory
facilities, and Battelle, a nonprofit applied science and technology organization.